Steady, men, steady

From A treasury of American anecdotes; sly, salty, shaggy stories of heroes and hellions, beguilers and buffoons, spellbinders and scapegoats, gagsters and gossips, from the grassroots and sidewalks of America by Benjamin Albert Botkin. 

An old couple once lived in a section of Bourbon County, [Kentucky], known as “The Pocket.” Time passed, the old woman was seized with a mighty illness, and she fell into a sleep of death. The day of her funeral arrived. The coffin was loaded on a wagon, friends and acquaintances fell in behind it on foot and horseback, and the procession wound slowly and solemnly to the graveyard gate.

The coffin was unloaded from the wagon at the gate. As the pallbearers started up the rough, steep path to the grave, one of them slipped and the coffin fell to the ground. The old woman rolled out, came to life, was taken home, and lived seven more years.

The next time she died, the funeral procession wended its way to the same graveyard, over the same rough road. But when the gate was reached, and the pallbearers lifted the coffin out of the wagon to carry it up the steep path to the grave, the bereaved husband quickly stepped to the head of the procession. Then he turned and admonished the pallbearers. “Steady, men, steady."